CREWE: Grandparents then and now

Kids love their grandparents no matter what they do. Just being there is enough. (Contributed)

I spend a lot of time listening to friends talk about their grandchildren. How they pick them up after school, take them to hockey games, and dance recitals, babysit often, help them with their homework, have them on sleepovers, drag them to the doctors, plan birthday parties, take them to the movies, buy them clothes, plan vacations around them and sit on the floor playing Transformers or Barbie dolls. Hmm. That sounds a lot like parenting to me.

They also tell me that they are called into action because their children are in the middle of a divorce, so their grandchildren might need a little extra time with Nanny and Poppy, while Mom and Dad sort themselves out. And what with dads being away out west to make money, moms rely on their moms to fill in some of the rough patches.

And none of these selfless people ever say that they are being used. They’re just grandparents, and that’s what grandparents do. In 2017.

I was a kid in the ’50s and ’60s. I loved my grandparents very much. And here’s what they did with me.

If I had to stay with my grandmother, I helped her with the housework, because she sure as shootin’ wasn’t stopping her day to amuse me. She let me pour flour in the bowl and lick the spoon, and told me to watch through the oven door to see the cookies rise, but that was it.

I was warned to stay away from the wringer washer, but it was endlessly fascinating to watch her feed clothes through the roller. She let me hang up tea towels on the clothesline, but the complicated stuff like overalls were her territory. I also helped put sheets on the bed but never did it to her satisfaction.

We’d have lunch together — whatever she was having. I wasn’t asked what I’d like to eat, and it never occurred to me to put in a different request. She’d hand me a wicker basket and tell me to go to the garden and pick some beans and peas for supper.

If I was really lucky, I got to watch television with her. We’d watch soap operas — The Edge of Night or Another World. I had no idea what was going on, but watching Grammie tsk whenever someone kissed was a lot of fun.

Grampy was never around because he was always at work. When he’d come home, he’d wash his hands with Snap, to get the grease out from underneath his fingernails. He’d tousle my hair and ask about my day, but mostly he was interested in dinner.

He’d sit in his chair after supper and smoke a pipe while he read the paper. I’d sit at his feet and he’d hand me a section when he was finished with it. I loved the smell of his pipe and how the light glinted off his round glasses. He had a bald head that shone in the lamplight too.

When I was told it was time for bed, I went. I’d give Grampy a kiss and then Grammie said she’d be in to kiss me goodnight. I’d get my pyjamas on, wash my face, brush my teeth and yell for her. She’d sit at the edge of the bed and tell me to say my prayers. I’d kneel on the floor and put my elbows on the mattress, and ask God to bless my mother and father and sister and Grammie and Grampy and the cat and the rabbit I saw in the garden, and Grammie would tell me that should do it, and she’d tuck me in and kiss me goodnight. I don’t remember her reading me stories, but sometimes I could persuade her to tell me what it was like when she was a girl.

She told me she baked all her family’s bread from the time she was nine. I thought she was amazing.

I think sometimes people worry too about entertaining their grandchildren. Kids love their grandparents no matter what they do. Just being there is enough.

Lesley Crewe is a writer living in, and loving, Cape Breton. These are the meandering musings of a bored housewife, whose ungrateful kids left her alone with a retired husband and two fat cats who couldn’t care less. Her ninth book, Mary, Mary, is in bookstores now.